Seabiscuit was a famous and outstanding racehorse of yesteryear. Seabiscuit the movie (2003) is, in my opinion, a superficial, pedestrian bore. So horse trainer Chris Cooper thinks would-be jockey Tobey Maguire might be able to handle feisty Seabiscuit because Maguire himself is feisty. Yeah, right.

So vexing, perhaps, is Gary Ross’s hit flick that it even induced Peter Rainer, an otherwise good critic, to write in New York magazine something very foolish, i.e. that Seabiscuit may be “the first bona fide Dubya-era movie: It exalts the haves while paying lip service to the have-nots.” The Bush presidency had its problems but, last I heard, George W. did not dismantle the welfare system. Plus he sent billions of dollars to Africa to help people with AIDs. Lip service to the have-nots?